English Faculty Profiles

• Cheryl Alison
• Hilary Binda
• David Valdez Greenwood
• Kim Hébert
• Mark Karlins
• Nancy Lee-Jones
• Micah Nathan
• Ted Weesner
• Cynthia Williams

Cheryl Alison

Cheryl Alison is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at Tufts University, with an M.A. in English Literature, also from Tufts. Her dissertation is entitled Creatures of Habit, and combines fine arts studies, theatre, drama and the novel in its study of our structures of home, habit,and routine. Prior to joining the SMFA as an instructor in English and writing, she taught English 1 and 2 at Tufts University for four years. Her interests include late Modernism in both English and American literature, as well as visual culture and literary theory.

Hilary Binda

Hilary Binda received her B.A. in Women's Studies and Modern Culture and Media from Brown University in 1989, an M.A. in English from Tufts University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in English from Tufts in 2002. Her areas of specialization are the English Renaissance and Critical Theory. Hilary held the position of Assistant Professor at The Evergreen State College from 2001-2004. Since that time she has been a Full-Time Lecturer in the Visual and Critical Studies Department of Tufts University, teaching and directing the English Program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Hilary teaches a year-long Critical Theory course, Shakespeare's Art, The Literature of Modernism, Histories of Sexuality, Writing Art, Poetry, and a co-taught English/Text Image Arts course called Textual Image/Visual Text. Hilary has published articles and reviews related to her current book project, entitled Image Conscious: Iconoclasm and the Reformation of Time in Early Modern English Literature, in the following journals: Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Text and Technology, Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth Century Studies, South Atlantic Review. She has presented essays at annual conventions of the MLA, SAA (Shakespeare Association of America), M/MLA, SC/MLA, Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference, Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, among others.

David Valdes Greenwood

David Valdes Greenwood is the author of three non-fiction books: Homo Domesticus, A Little Fruitcake, and The Rhinestone Sisterhood. He co-authors The Family Gaytriarchs, the nation's first mainstream media same-sex parenting column, for AOL's ParentDish.Com, and is a former Boston Globe Magazine columnist. He is also a playwright whose work has been seen at Portland Stage, Ensemble Studio Theatre, NJ Rep, Theater Offensive, and the Humana Festival.Three of his plays are published, including Brave Navigator and two anthologized shorts, Dream of Jeannie-by-the-Door and Day Eight: Snow Globe. You can learn more at his website: www.davidvaldesgreenwood.com

Kimberly Hébert

Kimberly Hébert received her B.A. in English from Columbia in New York City and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at Tufts University. The focus of her research includes late 19th & 20th c. American literature with a particular emphasis on writers of color including writers of the African Diaspora; writing & composition pedagogy/practice; film & film theory; critical race theory; US cultural studies; post‑colonial literature & theory; performance studies; visual studies; and US Southern Studies specifically Louisiana. Her publications include ‘Acting the Nigger’: Topsy, Shirley Temple, and Toni Morrison's Pecola;; Uncovering Codes/(Re)Covering Africa: Pauline Hopkins' Linguistic Journey to a 'Hidden Self; and But Who Will Lead the Revolution‑‑a poetic, historical examination of color bias within communities of color.  She has been the recipient of Tufts University's Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education Award and its Multicultural Service Award. She writes & teaches about how culture is produced.

Mark Karlins

Mark Karlins has taught a number of courses, including Children's Literature and Writing, Introduction to Film, Native American Literature, and Expository Writing.  His children's books include:  Starring Lorenzo, And Einstein Too (Dial, 2009), Music Over Manhattan (Doubleday, 1998), Mendel's Ladder (Simon & Schuster, 1995), Salmon Moon (Simon & Schuster, 1993), A Christmas Fable (Atheneum, 1990).

Nancy Lee-Jones

Nancy Lee-Jones received her B.A. from Stanford University, M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Tufts University.  She spent six years teaching in Europe (where she also free-lanced in photography and graphics) before returning to teach at University of Miami and, most recently, St. Joseph's University in
Philadelphia.  Her area of specialization is Modern British and Postcolonial Literature with an active interest in gender studies. She has a collection of short stories coming out in Spring 2010 and she has three times won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Micah Nathan

Micah Nathan is the best-selling author of two novels: "Gods of Aberdeen" (Simon & Schuster, 2005) and "Losing Graceland" (Broadway/Random House, 2011). His short stories and essays have appeared in Bellingham Review, Glimmer Train, The Gettysburg Review, Boston Globe Magazine and other national publications. He received his MFA from Boston University, where he was awarded the 2010 Saul Bellow Prize in Fiction, and his short fiction has been a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award and the Innovative Fiction Award. He has also worked as a script doctor for Dimension Films. When he’s not penning his next tale of mayhem and woe, Micah teaches Advanced Fiction at Boston University and is consulting editor for LEMON Magazine.

Ted Weesner, Jr.

Ted Weesner, Jr. is a writer based in Somerville, whose work has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Memorious, Gastronomica, Glamour, The Boston Globe and on National Public Radio. His story "Tuscaloosa,” featured in Ploughshares’ Emerging Writers issue, was a Best American Notable selection. He has been the recipient of a PEN/New England Discovery Award, grants from the St. Botolph Club and Somerville Arts Council, and a residency at the MacDowell Colony. His essays about The Catcher in the Rye are included in Scribner’s American Writer and The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. He teaches writing at Tufts and The Museum School, and is completing both a novel and play about expatriates living in 1990s’ Prague.

Cynthia Williams

Cynthia Williams received her B.A. in the History of Ideas from Princeton University and her M.A. in English Literature from the University of Louisville. She is currently a doctoral candidate in English at Tufts University, with a concentration in British romanticism and transatlantic studies. Her dissertation is titled “Formal Invitations: Hospitality, Belonging, and National Identity in the Years after Waterloo.” Other research interests include material culture, visual culture, posthumanism, and thing theory. Cynthia has presented her work at regional MLA conventions, the American Literature Association and at annual meetings of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. Her publications include “Susan Warner’s Queechy and the Bildungsroman Tradition” and prize-winning essay “Mary Shelley’s Bestiary: The Last Man and the Discourse of Species.” Two other publications are forthcoming. "Forms of Alienation: Transatlantic Loops and Urban Anonymity in Mary Shelley’s Lodore" will appear in a volume of collected essays on Urban Identity and the Atlantic Public Sphere (Palgrave Macmillan), and "Disarticulating the Nation: Reading Displacement in Cooper’s The Pilot" will be published in the Proceedings of the James Fenimore Cooper Society. Shehas taught at the Museum School since January of 2009.